Individual and group rights

Individual rights, also known as natural rights, are rights that every person has just by being human. Some people believe these rights come from God. An individual right is a moral claim to be free to act in certain ways.

Group rights, or collective rights, are rights that a group has as a whole, not just for each person in the group separately. This is different from individual rights, which belong to each person.

Individual rights and group rights sometimes do not agree with each other. In the past, group rights have been used both to take away individual rights and to help protect them, making this a topic that many people debate about.

Organizational group rights

Besides the rights of groups based on things that don't change about their members, there are also rights for organizations. These include countries, trade unions, corporations, trade groups, business groups, certain ethnic groups, and political parties. These organizations have rights that match what they are meant to do. For example, a company can talk to the government for all its customers or employees. A trade union can discuss better benefits with employers for all the workers in a company.

Philosophies

In the views of classical liberals and some right-libertarians, the government's job is to protect people's natural rights and make sure justice is done when these rights are broken. Governments that care about individual rights often have rules to protect these rights, like fair trials in criminal justice.

Some rights belong to groups, like the right of peoples to decide their own future, which is written in the United Nations Charter. If people cannot choose their own path together, they cannot protect their individual rights and freedoms.

Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that each generation has the right to use the earth and what it offers. The United States Declaration of Independence talks about rights for both people and states, such as the right to change or end a government that is harmful.

Dutch legal thinker Hugo Krabbe explained that there are two ways to think about the state: one where the community comes first and gives rights to individuals, and another where the individual comes first with natural rights, and the community is formed from their choices.

The Soviet Union believed, following Marxism–Leninism, that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights focused too much on individual rights and not enough on group rights.